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> p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down. I beg you thing otherwise. I spent my first 5 years of life, 1990-1995, with my mother shuttling in between a country which I would rather not name, and Russia, where my father lived until she was able to secure Russian citizenship, and a Russian birth certificate for me. People in early nineties Russia were going crazy from all novelties they saw for the first time in their lives. Either in 1995, or in 1996, the first Western (actually South Korean) supermarket in the town was JAMPACKED with people for months after opening despite it being quite a huge
warehouse store style supermarket, and very far away from the city. People were making reservations to get into it. On the other hand, people previously in position of social prominence, affluence, and power were in a such deep shock for years on end, that some very literally died from starvation because they didn't know how the money are supposed to be earned from something that is not a government. |
I wasn't saying that Russia in the 90s was an happy place like the cocaine driven USA of the 90s.
Russia in the 90s was dealing with the ruins left by the regime.
I know of people that died because they poisoned themselves with home made vodka.
In Italy people were going crazy from all the novelties too, like any novelty people are attracted to them, you could see kids walking down the streets all dressed like Andre Agassi, all with the same haircut, even those that had no money to afford them, a friend of mine was caught many times stealing from the new mall that had recently opened in Rome.
It might surprise you, but the first mall in Rome was opened in 1989. Not so long ago.
It was fun at first, it soon became the most boring thing to do.
The first Mc Donald's in Italy was opened in Piazza di Spagna (Spanish steps) in 1987, 40 years after their first opening in the US.
The first Mc Donald's in Russia opened in 1990, not a lot of difference there.
Ironically, probably thanks to the strong US military presence, Germany had its first Mc Donald's in 1971.
There were people that saw one in Germany (probably agents from East Germany as well) 16 years before us.
Of course the difference is we could travel to US, there was no restriction for us to go there.
But on average people didn't know much about US culture up until the middle 80s.
We actually knew USSR a lot better than the US of A, just as an example see the story of Togliattigrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolyatti
They mainly knew stories about their grandfathers who went to America between the two wars.
Most of them never came back, the only read about it from letters.
But what brought USSR down wasn't the discovery of the supermarkets, it was the war in Afghanistan that left the once powerful Eastern Block with no money and forced them to declare bankruptcy.